MONICA SELES

Life is not worth living if I cannot have pasta or bread again.

Madonna has total control over her life, and not many women have that.

It doesn't matter who is playing or how old they are. I just worry about what I can control. It doesn't give me more or less motivation.

I am lucky to have advisers whom I trust.

I love new restaurants; I love trying out new foods.

You will never have great tennis champions from England because of the cold and dark, but most of all because people only care about the sport for two weeks a year, and then they're on to something else. There's just not a great love of the sport there.

Tennis is pretty unforgiving if you are carrying weight. You are expected to wear short skirts, and you are compared to all these 16 and 17-year-olds.

I don't like salads: I like the strong food.

I'm about the present.

Everybody has their story - at some point you have to say, 'This is who I am: Now it's up to me to become what I want to be.'

I did realise more than ever, after the stabbing, that tennis is a business - a tough business.

I've always been a very private person.

Tennis has to become everything to you if you're going to make it to the top. You have to live it.

Did you know that Christmas Day is absolutely the best day to fly? It is. No crowded airports and crowded planes. I always flew to Australia. That's what Christmas was for me - a plane journey to the next tournament.

People think I must have been so talented at an early age, but I don't know - was it talent or hard work? Who knows?

If you look at tennis, the girls have become much more attractive; they wear makeup. In my generation, you were a tennis player. It wasn't like you had to look a certain way.

I would like to thank all my tennis fans who were there from Day One when I was No. 1, through my stabbing, and my comeback.

If I find the person that I love, it is because I love them, not because I will be dependent on them.

I think for me, food was a way for me to deal with emotional trouble.

As a top player, you have to keep your emotions in check. You think you can control everything.

I lost my dad way too early and it was agonisingly awful. I missed him so much and I hated knowing that I could never again pick up the phone to tell him about my day.

For me, the biggest thing with money has always been independence - just the biggest.

That's the key to success, isn't it? It has to be fun.

I have this terrible dark side to my personality, which playing tennis keeps at bay.

What I put in the stock market, I don't have to touch in my lifetime. I want to live off my bonds. I want to be that safe.